Suicide (French Literature Series)
Page 7
There were, in this big bourgeois house in the middle of town, a dozen couples. The girls and boys of your adolescence had come with their companions. They were now adults; some of them were accompanied by their children. You looked at their faces and appreciated the strange impression of seeing the memories you had of them superimposed upon their current faces, as in films, one body transforming into another in a few seconds. But, as you watched, today’s faces didn’t manage to efface the old ones imprinted in your memory. You would no doubt have needed to see these people for some time in order for the present to replace the past, and for your mental identity files to fix upon the morphologies now in front of you. This evening, if you were speaking to a woman, and you turned away for a few minutes, when you looked at her a second time the two images became confused all over again. You spent part of the evening playing with these disturbances of perception, like dressing a doll with only two outfits at your disposal. But if you wanted to, you could also dismiss the old images and speak to these people as if they were new acquaintances. Whereas, on the contrary, if you concentrated on the past, the words that they pronounced would reach you as a distant murmur, a speech given by a character from a dream, in a foreign language, yet made up of familiar sounds.
Christophe had prepared beef and pork, sausages and potatoes, which he had cooked on the two barbecues set up a few meters away from the tables covered in paper tablecloths. Plates, cutlery, and plastic cups were put at the guests’ disposal. Several boxes of cheap wine, white and red, awaited drinkers next to the fruit juice and cheap sodas. Usually, this kind of crude menu would bother you, all the more so in that the smoke set off in its preparation would smother the gathering if the wind blew in the wrong direction, and would leave its odor on their clothing until the next day. But this evening, nothing disturbed you. Though the charm of the beautiful garden, adorned with lilacs in flower, was wasted on you. The re-discovery of these old acquaintances gave you so much pleasure that the scene could have unfurled anywhere. Your wife beamed with the joy of seeing you happy; she who, not knowing anyone, could not partake in the euphoria of the grand reunion. She felt herself to be an outsider to the scene, yet familiar with all the people, since they were familiar to you. You paid no attention to your happiness, up until the moment when you understood, looking at her, just how happy you were to be there. She was your mirror.
Christophe came over with a plate he had prepared for you. Touched by his attention, you took it and began eating. The dishes were overcooked; part of the meat had been turned into charcoal. But these details did not diminish your joy, perhaps they even constituted it, since you could not attribute your happiness to anything other than the people reunited here, even their imperfections.
While night fell and the hours passed, you spoke now to some, now to others. When you were addressing an old friend, in a tête-à-tête, you came to believe your words were the right ones. But when speaking to two people at once, you tried to find words that could touch both of them at the same time. You rarely succeeded: the proximity of bodies, which demonstrated their singularity, reminded you how difficult it is to speak simultaneously to two. If, however, as happened later, you told a story to a group gathered together to listen to you, your words no longer sought to address themselves to anyone in particular, and what you said could be received by everyone in his own manner, without you concerning yourself with who had understood what. You no longer saw anyone in particular, only a group where individualities dissolved. You needed, in order to speak comfortably, to be as close as possible to your listeners when in dialogue, or as far as possible from them when making a speech. In between, you felt misunderstood.
Toward three in the morning, while you were holding your wife’s hand, listening to Christophe make all the guests laugh, none of whom had left yet, you thought back to the conversations you had been having. You’d passed from one old friend to another, you had told stories to groups of a few people at a time, and you had succeeded finally in speaking to couples without being at a loss for words. This party, to which you had come without conviction, ended up enchanting you. You belonged to a community united by memories. Later, none of the guests at the party believed, when they heard what happened, that you were already thinking of suicide then.
You knew that some of those close to you would feel guilty at not having anticipated your choice to die, and that they would deplore their inability to help you to want to live. But you thought them mistaken. No one other than yourself could have given you a greater taste for life than for death. You imagined scenes in which someone tried to cheer you up, as a mother might take her melancholy child by the hand and show it things she believes will make it happy. The repulsion that then took hold of you did not come from your rejection of this well-meaning woman, nor from the nature of the supposed objects of joy that she would show you, but from the fact that the desire to live could not be dictated to you. You could not be happy on command, whether the order was given by you or by someone else. The moments of happiness you knew came unbidden. You could understand their sources, but you could not reproduce them.
In a vintage store, you bought a pair of discreetly elegant black leather English shoes. The high-quality leather was almost new, yet it bore the imprint of its previous owner. The fronts of the shoes were creased according to the shape of his feet, which were similar to your own. When you tried them on in the store, they adapted themselves perfectly to your morphology, as if you had been wearing them for months. You were in the habit of hesitating when buying clothing. Your wardrobe was already well stocked, and since it only contained plain and simple clothing, it would never go out of fashion. To buy new clothing would only have been necessary if the old were worn out. It wasn’t money that guided your choices, but your mania for collecting nearly identical outfits. You used to choose, in stores, an improved version of what you already owned, in order to constitute the perfect assortment, the universal uniform freeing you of the daily duty of choosing how to dress yourself. Even though you knew that this uniform did not exist, you continued on your quest. Despite the numerous pairs of black leather shoes you already possessed, you decided to acquire this new pair. Finding them by chance in a vintage store appeared to you to be a sign. You did not yet know of what. Though you would find out soon enough. A few days later, you went to an informational meeting held by a green party campaigning in the general elections. You went alone, and, after the speeches, you were hanging around the buffet, inclined to converse with the militants. The environmentalists attracted you for their ideas, but you didn’t believe them capable of governing wisely once elected. A couple came up to you. The man spoke of the importance of preserving regional cultures, particularly languages, in the face of globalization, and the increasingly widespread use of English. You listened to his conventional remarks while responding with nods of the head, which let him believe that you agreed. His wife, by his side, remained silent. Until her face suddenly collapsed. She fixed her eyes on you, dropped them, and fixed them on you anew. These backs and forths made her nervous. She left to get herself a glass of white wine. Her behavior disturbed you and plunged you deeper into silence. The man kept on speaking to you until, faced with your lack of reaction, he took his leave of you and made off toward someone else. You went back to the buffet to ask the waiter for another drink, and once you were served, as you cleared a trail through the militants, you stumbled across the wife. She asked you to follow her so she could talk to you away from the crowd. She was on the verge of tears; her lips were trembling. She had recognized the shoes you were wearing. They were the ones that she had given to her nephew, and which his mother had sold after he committed suicide.
You did not have children. Your wife had asked you if you wanted any. You didn’t feel ready yet, and you didn’t know if you ever would be. To procreate was such an important and such a mysterious act that you did not believe yourself capable of doing it wisely. You had to accept not being able to measure up to your capacity
to transmit life. You did not think that, when they conceived you, your parents were any more reasonable than you currently were. Guessing at the selfishness and the levity of their decision distressed you. So you came to believe that you had been less desired for what you were than for what they imagined you would be. You felt like an impostor, because you knew that, though you had not disappointed them, you never resembled the dreams they had built around you. However, you did not know anything about these dreams, since you had never asked your parents to tell you about them. Why have a child? In order to prolong life, and for the sake of curiosity about what your offspring might look like. You reached a point of thinking that the life you were leading was not worth prolonging. But your child would not be you. It would be itself. There was no reason to believe that you would pass your sadness on to it. Might it not be, on the contrary, destined for happiness? Yet, rather than giving your wife an answer, you remained evasive. Awaiting an enthusiasm you did not show, she took your silence for a refusal. You died without descendents.
As my thoughts turn to you again, I do not suffer. I do not miss you. You are more present in my memory than you were in the life we shared. If you were still alive, you would perhaps have become a stranger to me. Dead, you are as alive as you are vivid.
Your desire to die was less strong at night than during the day and less strong in the morning than in the afternoon.
You did not leave a letter to those close to you, explaining your death. Did you know why you wanted to die? If you did, why not write it down? Out of fatigue from living and disdain for leaving traces that would survive you? Or because the reasons that were pushing you to disappear seemed empty? Maybe you wanted to preserve the mystery of your death, thinking that nothing should be explained. Are there good reasons for committing suicide? Those who survived you asked themselves these questions; they will not find answers.
Your mother cried for you when she learned of your death. She cried for you every day until your burial. She cried for you alone, in her husband’s arms, in the arms of your brother and your sister, in the arms of her mother and your wife. She cried for you during the ceremony, following your coffin to the cemetery, and during your inhumation. When friends, many of them, came to present their condolences, she cried for you. With every hand that she shook, with every kiss she received, she again saw fragments of your past, of the days she believed you to be happy. Faced with your death, scenarios of what you could have lived or experienced with these people, gave them a feeling of immense loss: you had, by your suicide, saddened your past and abolished your future. Your mother cried for you in the days following your funeral, and she cried for you again, alone, whenever she thought of you. Years later, there are many, like her, whose tears flow whenever they think of you.
Regrets? You had some for causing the sadness of those who cried for you, for the love they felt for you, and which you had returned. You had some for the solitude in which you left your wife, and for the emptiness your loved ones would experience. But these regrets you felt merely in anticipation. They would disappear along with you: your survivors would be alone in carrying the pain of your death. This selfishness of your suicide displeased you. But, all things considered, the lull of death won out over life’s painful commotion.
You wrote a collection of verses, brief and condensed, like your life. You told nobody about them. Your wife discovered them after your death in your desk drawer:
Ferns caress me
Nettles sting me
Brambles scratch me
The city hones me
The house welcomes me
The bedroom calms me
The enemy encourages me
Combat excites me
Victory leaves me indifferent
Day dazzles me
Evening soothes me
Night envelops me
Dominating oppresses me
Subjugating enslaves me
Being alone frees me
Heat bothers me
Rain closes me in
Cold awakens me
Tobacco irritates me
Alcohol tranquilizes me
Drugs isolate me
Evil surprises me
Forgetting is desirable to me
Laughter saves me
Wishing carries me
Pleasure disappoints me
Desire picks me up again
Friendship ties me
Love reveals me
Sex delights me
Accumulation tempts me
Keeping reassures me
Daring relieves me
The sun wearies me
The earth surrounds me
The moon moves me
Life is proposed to me
My name is passed on to me
My body is imposed on me
Television depresses me
Radio disturbs me
Newspapers bore me
Saints fascinate me
The faithful intrigue me
Priests disquiet me
What is unique surprises me
What is double resembles me
What is triple reassures me
Equilibrium maintains me
Falling reveals me
Recovery exhausts me
A single point hypnotizes me
A constellation scatters me
A line guides me
Time is lacking for me
Space is enough for me
The void attracts me
The basement repels me
The attic appeals to me
The staircase guides me
Talent charms me
Virtuosity fools me
Genius illuminates me
Prudence agitates me
Violence excites me
Vengeance disappoints me
Thirst bothers me
Hunger enlivens me
Eating puts me to sleep
The edge tempts me
The hole draws me
The bottom alarms me
The truth moves me
Uncertainty bothers me
Falsehood fascinates me
Gossip misleads me
Polemic enflames me
Silence redeems me
Obstacles raise me
Defeat hardens me
Success mollifies me
Error instructs me
Habit improves me
Perfection obsesses me
Offenses surprise me
Retorts come slowly from me
Contempt avenges me
Perdition tempts me
Irony neutralizes me
Affection redeems me
Faith rattles me
Fidelity suits me
Treason stabs me
Departures delight me
Voyages numb me
Arrivals revive me
Earth bears me
Sand slows me
Mud traps me
Euphoria dissuades me
Innuendo disquiets me
Neutrality convinces me
Sermons annoy me
Examples persuade me
Action vindicates me
Cleaning bores me
Tidying calms me
Discarding delivers me
The new attracts me
The old anchors me
Change animates me
Work fulfills me
Hobbies instruct me
Holidays sedate me
To know makes me grow
Not to know harms me
To forget frees me
Losing is bothersome to me
Winning is a matter of indifference to me
To play is disappointing to me
To deny tempts me
To affirm excites me
To suggest is enough for me
Seducing seduces me
Loving transforms me
Separating pains me
Clothing announces me
Disguises hide me
Unifor
ms efface me
Speaking commits me
Listening teaches me
Silence tempers me
Birth befalls me
Life occupies me
Death completes me
To climb is difficult for me
To descend is easy for me
To be stationary is useless to me
Homage obliges me
Oration touches me
Eulogy buries me
The flash blinds me
The beam dazzles me
The reflection intrigues me
Speaking identifies me
Shouting frees me